+ Sponsors

Saturday, 28 April 2012

OT: Motivation

Regular readers might remember my disquisition a year ago about hoarding. (I'm not technically a hoarder, but I fear I carry the gene). So anyway, since then, I've discovered that the A&E show* is a great way to motivate myself to do housework (which I've been doing all day). I just watch an episode, and my irrational fear of ending up like those people energizes me to get cracking and clean up and throw stuff away and put laundry in and do the dishes and just...go organize...something. Anything.

It's great. Works like a charm.

Okay, okay. Back to work.

Off-duty Mike

* The camerawork on that show is beginning to drive me crazy, though. Apparently they think that the more disgusting the subject is, the closer they'd better put us to it. It's getting to be too much for me. I wish I could find some way to communicate with the show's producers so I could assure them that I am indeed completely grossed out by mouse feces all over the kitchen countertops as it is, thanks, without seeing said droppings at like 200x life size on my screen as if they're right at the end of my nose. I know it's normative these days to turn everything up to 11 and take it over the top, but this is ridiculous. Please, A&E, tell the guy with the camera to take a step back! It's okay. I'll still be just as disgusted. Really.

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by g carvajal: "I am a camera hoarder. A&E network has been chasing me around trying to get a closeup of my collection. Help!"

Featured Comment by Ed: "Ah, collecting, the favorite pastime of many a photographer. Saw a documentary about Martin Parr the other day in Helmond...(great show; if you're in the neighborhood, take a detour)...he collects everything photographic. Great collection of photographic dinnertrays and wallpapers...but hey, is photography itself not the art of collecting images?"

Unfortunately, the guy holding the camera is not the one making these decisions. He is just trying to keep his job. And as long as people are watching, this is the way these shows are done. The days when high brow documentary style made money are over, at least for the most part.

I watched a couple of episodes after you suggested it on this blog ... and ... well, it had the same effect on me. In my new apartment, all my *stuff* is now in my basement, and my new approach is really minimalist.

Hoarders is a tough one to watch. Of all the 3rd rate shows I watch my favorite is North Woods Law. Animal Planet I believe. Law enforcement and the goings on in backwoods Maine where I lived for a few years.

Cop to tough looking Billy who just gets off his Harley. "I want to talk to you about the arrow that went though the that pickup's windshield while driving in front of your trailer. You know that's attempted homicide." All with genuine Maine accents. Gotta love it.

I can't watch hoarders anymore..just gets me way to p'd off at those folks and the sheer amount of selfishness and nastiness that they direct at their families in order to be able to pursue their hoardering..Self involvement like that, no matter how sick they are, gets me really jolted.

You have nothing to worry about my friend. If you're even partly concerned when watching the show you don't carry the gene. An acquaintance of mine fills his house with newspapers. It grows until only small aisles allow passage from bathroom to entrance doors. But..... he and his wife sleep in the bathtubs. A kero lantern serves as their heater in the winter. Heating the bathrooms to just above 50F. Every few years a tractor-trailer shows up and carries the newspapers to be sold. Their raingutters supply the water for flushing and bathing. No electricity or city water in the house. He has a full set of tires WITH nice tread in his basement. Once a year at inspection time he installs them on his car. Otherwise all four on the car are bald. He coasts downhill and turns his lights off until he restarts the engine at the bottom of a hill. He collects aluminum, tin, any kind of can or bottle. I've known him for 30 years. He used to work for NASA. Last year he vanished with his wife. The rumor is that he purchased a bank in the Virgin Islands. Some of these hoarders have a plan.......

About camerawork: I've noticed on many TV shows and documentary films, there's a tendency in recent years to film people so not their head, but their *face* fills the entire frame. In HD, this is seldom a nice view, and even young models can look quite disturbing in close-up when they have direct sunlight in their face (what are they thinking? Read a photograph book for beginners), and when you can see every nick and yellow edge in their teeth.

One documentary film was about the Danish pop-rock band Gasolin', which ruled Scandinavia in the seventies. Well, the guys are not that far from their own seventies now, and seeing their miss-kept teeth twoo feet high each on the big screen was not helpful to the nostalgia.

I find it has the opposite effect, acting as a reminder that my small motley of semi-organized photography equipment really isn't that bad after all.

But then again I can see all of the floor, none of our cats is unaccounted for and the very idea of just throwing trash across the room to land wherever it may makes me a little queasy. Some of these homes must REALLY smell bad.